A specific group of researchers of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health or the NIH, has come to startling conclusion over the role of the medication ketamine in the recent days. It has been found through their extensive research that    ketamine which is traditionally used as a viable experiment for depression is also able to relieve the symptoms of the very disorder, but shall take just a few hours to accomplish instead of the conventional time frame of weeks or months it takes for the existing antidepressants to work. However, it is to be noted down that whereas due to the presence of the side effects the ketamine will not come into use, the new finding will augment the initiatives of the scientists to get a comprehensive discernment of the development of faster-acting antidepressant medications.   

But what is the effectively of the ketamine? The Ketamine in its turn blocks a receptor called NMDA on brain cells, a notable finding according to an earlier NIMH study in humans, whereas in the new study the mice displays that this is nothing but an intermediary step. It thus becomes visible that the blocking of NMDA tends to increase activity of another receptor AMPA and it is this enhancement in AMPA happens to be decisive for the rapid antidepressant actions of the ketamine.

The recent researches have found that approximately 15 million American adults are having a depressive disorder. While there happens to be need of a long wait for the commencement of the feeling of the effects of conventional medications there is a great risk that patients may proceed towards a worsening condition, elevating the risk of suicide for even some of them. This depressive disorders in due course also casts is devastating effect on children and adolescents. Therefore there is a high expectation among the scientists that through process of aiming the innovative medications at more direct molecular targets, of which the prime being NMDA or AMPA, there shall be an opportunity to find a way around some of the steps through which the existing antidepressants exert their effects but not directly. These are the very steps which in its turn accounts for the long time it takes for patients to set in motion the feeling for the betterment with the conventional medications.

Speaking on the innovative discovery Dr. Elias Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the NIH said,   "Our research is showing us how to develop medications that get at the biological roots of depression. This new finding is a major step toward learning how to improve treatment for the millions of Americans with this debilitating disorder; toward eliminating the weeks of suffering and uncertainty they have to endure while they wait for their medications to work."